Necromancy
by Alexa Aurion
Summary: Jade had hoped that the world was beyond trying to revive the dead using Fomicry. Particularly if he was the one involved. Future AU


_This is my first forage into Abyss fandom; I apologise for any mistakes. (It's been a long time since I've written fanfiction.)__ This started life as a oneshot, but I think my muse has seen fit to scrap that idea. Please don't expect any fast updates, though._

_I own only the mysterious, unnamed characters. Anything recognisable as copyrighted probably is, and not in my name.  
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_Charitable reviews are much appreciated!  
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**Necromancy**

_Alexa Aurion_

The teen drew his chalk stub across the ground in a painstaking pattern, checking his work against a double-spread tome time and again before resuming his meticulous art, careful not to disturb the dusty earth much as he moved about. Everything needed to be precisely correct; otherwise his labour would be for naught.

Eventually, he was satisfied enough to retrieve a collection of gemstones from a corner of the cavern. He ticked them off in his mind as he shuffled through the tiny polished half-spheres: an opal, two aquamarines, one garnet, two topazes and two turquoises.

He set them down in a certain pattern, a particular order he had memorised. Mind, eyes, hands, throat; feet, lungs, heart… He mumbled them repeatedly as he worked; book awaiting his subsequent arrival.

It took him a long while to start the next phase of his plans, studying the faded pages intently. Once more, he took up his small stick of chalk to draw a separate, smaller fonic circle, thinking absently with what little of his concentration wasn't taken up.

In the past, humans had been able to focus fonons to create the relevant circles without hours of strenuous, attention-demanding preparations. However, with the departure of the Seventh Sentience, Lorelei, the ability to channel fonons with such precision had long since been lost.

Fonic artes could still be cast from one's internal fon slots, dangerous and exhausting as it was: the slightest distraction or miscalculation of stamina could prove fatal; hence why fonic artists had since ceased trying to focus using self-induced fonic circles, instead resorting to drawing them. They had been quickly banned from everyday use, not that it had really been needed; as they were no longer as conventional as they had been.

Despite the fact he was forced to work at a methodical pace, the boy longed to progress faster. It was a race against time; he only had so long before he was found and dragged back to the commune. If he was lucky, he conceded a moment later, sitting back to examine his handiwork with a critical eye. He truly was testing the boundaries this time.

What he was attempting was against the laws he lived under; laws everyone had and ever would be under. He was working to revive the dead.

The greatest minds of Old Auldrant and the Dawn Age expressly forbade it; condemned it as the road to eternal failure. Death was intended as the end. Not even Lorelei held the power to reverse the end.

Across many generations, theories had been formed and tested—often with terminal consequences. However, one man had reached further than most, before moving to ban his own creations. It was this man's theories in particular that the boy had based the majority of his own around, regardless of the scorn of his peers. They, after all, didn't have the same knowledge as he.

Everything appeared to be in order at last. Taking a breath to steel himself, the boy stepped into the smaller glyph, careful not to smudge his efforts.

He stood in the centre, staring at the empty circle opposite. He was so close to fulfilling his objective, but never had he felt as uncertain of his postulations. So much could so easily go wrong; from mispronouncing or mistiming his spells, to his ideas being entirely incorrect. A shiver ate its way down his spine.

Well, he had to start at some point: the seven syllables of Creation were easy enough, and, as planned, it was a matter of just over three seconds before a shapeless mass of pure fonons formed in the larger glyph. The boy waited a beat, and, breathing steadily, spoke the necessary words to bind the fonons into a human guise.

As the light began to fade, the boy spoke the words of Summoning, reaching out for the exact fonic frequency he needed.

He spoke the departed's name three times, body twitching distractedly, but voice remaining impassive as a faint, semi-regular sound reached his ears. The screeching of armour, he realised.

Panic seized him. He needed a minute, only half if pushed—nine for the spirit to hear its name, one for it to wake, six for it to return to the world, ten to seal the spirit to its new body, and just over three more to bind it to his will.

Knights spilled through both entrances to the cave he stood in, weapons drawn, helmets down. Clearly, he'd gone well over the line this time; he wasn't going to return alive. It had certainly taken them enough time to comprehend that he wasn't about to be dissuaded from his ideas.

The boy's heart skipped a beat—was that his sister he could hear sobbing, somewhere behind him? Not that it really mattered; he couldn't stop now, even if he wanted to. The only way to stop was either to die or complete the proceedings.

Almost unconsciously, his foot had been tapping out the seconds as they passed. Now was the tricky part: speaking the first syllable of Confinement exactly as the spirit formed.

Sharp eyes noticed the slightest disturbance to the essence of the matter in the larger glyph, the boy speaking the first syllable, as his eyes slid shut. Hopefully, the knights wouldn't realise his intentions until it was too late. He had tried to keep his voice resigned.

His foot continued to bounce away.

The knights were no fools, he realised that much. They were simply waiting, wondering the risks of interfering: after all, no-one knew the consequences of interrupting the casting of a fonic arte; too much time had passed for true accounts to be recalled. Even so, it was only a matter of time before one thought to throw his sister into the nearest glyph.

Hopefully, it would take more than ten seconds for that to occur, or the results would be rather messy, he thought.

_Four…_

Unfortunately, somebody realised exactly what the boy wished they wouldn't: his sister was shoved forward, and from the sound of it, stumbling over her feet in fear.

_Three…_

She had better not step against either glyph, he thought angrily, or all his studying would be rendered useless by that simple movement.

_Two…_

Surely, she could stall for a second or more; it wasn't that difficult to stumble and fall on purpose.

_One…_

No such luck, he thought sourly as his foot counted the final second. He spoke the second syllable, binding the spirit to the body he had created.

Pure energy crackled around him as his sister crashed against the outer ring, his voice still ringing in the air. But which had happened first?

_Now it begins…_

His nerves drummed. That had all seemed a little too easy, a little too fast. Had he forgotten something; made an amateur mistake? No—surely, in that case, the fonic imbalances caused should have destroyed both him and anything in the immediate vicinity by now.

He turned to face the knights behind him, unable to observe his design, too afraid of failure. His sister's gaze as she fell against him wasn't much better; horror and disgust struggled for dominance.

The circle was broken—everything inside either glyph was free. Free to be killed.

The boy had known, deep down, that it would come to this. No doubt the knights now moving behind him had already destroyed his art, failed or not; next would be him and the girl shuddering by his side.

Boots crunched on the stony ground, somewhere behind him. He didn't look—although he did wonder why he could only hear one set of footsteps—too preoccupied by the knights fanning out around him. For some reason, their body language seemed repulsed, but still intent on his elimination.

Had he been the religious sort, the boy would have dropped to his knees and prayed to Lorelei for a quick death, as his sister was doing at that moment.

"_O darkened storm cloud, loose thy blade and run mine enemies through!_"

Odd, he thought; the voice sounded too mature by far to be mistaken for a person foolhardy enough to cast what sounded like a fonic arte in the old fashion. And yet, he could feel the fonons resonating with an unparalleled power in the spoken chant as much as in the air around him.

"_Thunder Blade!_"

The cavern seemed to spasm in size at the sheer amount of power drawn from the surroundings without warning. Lightning blazed, blinding the boy as it crashed against the company of knights, killing them all instantly.

Ice sunk through him as he slowly twisted to meet the piercing, red-eyed gaze of the man behind him. He'd forgotten to bind the spirit to his will—he had no control over it. His cursing, however, was buried beneath a thrill of exhilaration: he'd succeeded where all others had failed.

He had revived Malkuth's infamous Necromancer.


End file.
